He's known for writing some of the most romantic plays and poetry of all time, so it's no surprise that Shakespeare is a popular source when it comes to wedding readings and quotes! Whether you use them as part of your ceremony, inspiration for your vows, or as part of your decor, here are some of our favourite quotes from The Bard of Avon...
Sonnet 116
- Let me not to the marriage of true minds
- Admit impediments. Love is not love
- Which alters when it alteration finds,
- Or bends with the remover to remove:
- O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
- That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
- It is the star to every wandering bark,
- Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.Â
- Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
- Within his bending sickle's compass come:
- Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
- But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
- If this be error and upon me proved,
- I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Twelfth Night
- I love thee so, that, maugre all thy pride,
- Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.
- Do not extort thy reasons from this clause,
- For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause
- But rather reason thus with reason fetter,
- Love sought is good, but given unsought better.
Romeo and Juliet
- My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
- My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
- The more I have, for both are infinite.
The Tempest
- Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,Â
- Long continuance, and increasing,Â
- Hourly joys be still upon you!Â
- Juno sings her blessings upon you.
Sonnet 18
- Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Â
- Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Â
- Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
- And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
- Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
- And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
- And every fair from fair sometime declines,
- By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
- But thy eternal summer shall not fade
- Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
- Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
- When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
- So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
- So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
The Tempest
- Hear my soul speak:
- The very instant that I saw you, did
- My heart fly to your service.
The Merchant of Venice
- Beshrew your eyes,
- They have o’erlooked me and divided me.
- One half of me is yours, the other half yours—
- Mine own, I would say. But if mine, then yours,
- And so all yours.
Feeling inspired? Why not embrace a Shakespeare wedding theme by marrying in his home county of Warwickshire? Just take a look at these stunning Warwickshire wedding venues.
